At every level, Alldritt shows us a poet engaged in the world. During his tenure as senator in the Irish Parliament, he fought the Catholic divorce laws. He was the founder, with George Bernard Shaw, of the Irish Institute of Arts and Letters as well as the Abbey Theatre, where he refused to close down Synge's inflammatory play The Playboy of the Western World, despite riots in the street. He was instrumental in overturning the English domination of Irish literature and in researching and publishing books on Irish lore and fairy tales. He shows us a less familiar man: "a dedicated careerist, an ambitious man of determined self-interest, a seeker after social standing, and a combative man with a violent temper that sustained him in many nasty quarrels." Confrontational, scrappy, driven, he was deeply involved in both the political and literary issues of his day. Alldritt reveals that Yeats was not just "the sensitive introvert who began as the mooning dreamer and after a lifetime seeking philosophical and hermetic wisdom, ended as the learned sage" that Yeats himself and his biographers would have us believe. Now, Keith Alldritt gives us a lively telling of Yeats's story that puts the poet in the context of his times, from the high Victorian era to the modernism of the thirties. Astonishingly, no full biography of Yeats has appeared in many years. Playwright, essayist, theatrical impresario, occultist, politician, famously hapless lover-he was also one of the most colorful and complex. In 1923 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature as the first Irishman so honored for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation." Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers who completed their greatest works after being awarded the Nobel Prize.******.William Butler Yeats was not only one of the most beloved and honored poets of this century. Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and, along with Lady Gregory, Edward Martyn, and others, founded the Abbey Theatre, where he served as its chief during its early years. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms. About William Butler Yeats (from Wikipedia): ****** William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 - 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet and one of the foremost figures of 20th century literature. The poems are magic, and his SIGNATURE casts a spell. From the Preface: "This book contains all poetry not in dramatic form that I have written between my seven-and-twentieth year and the year 1921." Yeats' Later Poems is one of his more difficult books to find signed. Some of the GREATEST POEMS EVER WRITTEN by one of the GREATEST POET WHO EVER LIVED. A solid, attractive, very presentable copy. VERY GOOD Condition: Light wear to the spine ends, the spine label is darkened and has small chips to two of its corners, the covers' upper front corner tips are slightly bumped overall the covers are sturdy and quite lovely internally the pages are lightly toned as normal, otherwise just lightly used, tight, bright, clean, clear and unmarked. Hardcovers, cloth covered spine and paper covered boards, paper title label on the front cover and spine, 5.5x8 inches (13x20 cm), top page edges cut, other page edges deckled. From the Signature / Limitation page: "Of this edition of LATER POEMS 250 copies have been printed, of which this is number 207". "New and Revised" edition of Yeats' later poetry, first thus with the statement "Published March, 1924". Published by The Macmillan Company, New York.
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